


Sparrows

by TisNotButAPhaseMother



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Have cheese, Hurt/Comfort, I am a cheesy person, M/M, Mutant Powers, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, This will get cheesy, faes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-06 06:27:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15188798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TisNotButAPhaseMother/pseuds/TisNotButAPhaseMother
Summary: I needed an outlet for all my pent-up mushiness, and this happened.





	1. Prologue

_I tie you around my wrist every time I wake up._

He wouldn’t remember the first time he encountered the boy until much, much later, when the memories of even gaining the knowledge about his presence in the world would flood his brain like a slowly returning tide, overrunning the figurative sea-shore of his mind.

That moment wasn’t special or memorable by any means. Or, more specifically, the day was not. Crowds of rushing people, who - sadly - had just as many rights to swarm the pavement as he did, were playing a tug-o-war with the nearing end of their lunch-break. In a bulldozer like fashion, they pushed their way through the flocks of grey pigeons who feasted on their dropped crumbles and garbage even under the very real danger of being stomped into a concrete. A poet at heart, it baffled him to no ends to find a bird, the symbol of freedom and ethereal visions since the dawn of art, so graceless and gauche - yet here he was. 

Big city eventually does that to all creatures, he mused as the mass of bodies of various shapes and sizes pushed and pressed around him and he just tried to push back hard enough to not drown in it all, making his behavior essentially indistinguishable from everyone else's. The irony of turning himself into the very kind of person he despised just to get around his day in one piece wasn't lost to him, and he sighed as best as he could as the clacking of shoes and a constant chatter echoed and twined around him. _Clack, clack._ Somebody in an apparent hurry pressed against his chest in an attempt to push past him, which caused him to stumble back. _Clack, clack._ They called something over their shoulder, but he couldn't understand what and it didn't really matter. _Clack, clack, clack, clack._ He accidentally bumped into another person behind him, causing them to stumble as well. _Clack, clack, clack._ He apologized before moving on again. _Clack, clack._ He wasn't even sure they have heard him, and once more it didn't really matter. You stumble, you apologize, you move on; it's and endless cycle in the society of crowds. A perpetuum mobile of sound. _Clack, clack, clack._

No, the moment he has met the boy wasn't remarkable at all. That day, he didn’t even fully process the occurrence. It has been nothing but a glitch, there and gone in mere seconds, an unexpected colorful scale on the body of a dully grey fish – a moment too short to fully register in his brain, yet somehow grasping enough to be filed away for a later use without his consent. He remembered people, more people, and then one person, every detail of them blurry in his memory, except for the silken bright purple ribbon wrapped and tied into a bow around one pale wrist.

There and gone. A purple gleam in the mosaic of mundane everyday world, full of everyday people with predictable everyday schemes. A cheerful ribbon on a fully black-clad figure, as if the person wanted to blend in as much as they possibly could, while for some reason not having a heart to rip away that one last insignificant thing that, contrary to its seeming futility, has still managed to label them as odd. 

A simple glitch. An error. 

That day, he comprehended this meeting in the same way one would perhaps comprehend seeing a very nice flower while in a hurry: it didn’t really matter, yet for exactly 3.6 seconds his attention had been divided from the lobotomy of his daily tasks by something refreshingly strange.

He continued on with his life after the meeting, the slight crack in the dense afternoon canvas drowned under the thick layers of grey and the frantic tapping of polished boots on the pavement.


	2. Robin Redbreast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who is procrastinating on the _Far, far away story_ to write stuff about people with ribbons. 
> 
> Yep, this guy. 
> 
> Enjoy!

The street was dark and in this part of town, it was snowing.

The snowflakes covered the sidewalks like a white ink meant to collect his footprints for evidence. They swirled around the golden heads of lanterns, spiraling to the ground and into his hair in the stillness of the winter-time silence.

A cough escaped his throat in an unguarded moment, and he felt a shiver going down his spine. It seemed that the very shadows patrolling the street corners were offended at his disturbance. He bowed his head and focused on walking.

It was one in the morning, the streets were serenely empty, it was snowing and it would be snowing all the way up to a Woodland Depot and then some if the recent growing indignation of the Winter District representatives on the news was any indication.

He quickened his steps, not daring to break into a run despite his gut telling him to do so. This sector valued silence and peace above all, as the beings inhabiting it found that way of life best suiting for their kind of gifts. Should someone as different from them in their essence as him enter their "land", it was considered unbelievably rude to not respect the general pace of the area and its residents. The same went for anyone visiting any part of the town that either wasn't neutral or hadn't been specifically adjusted to their own kind. He was already walking too fast, the snow under his feet crunching softly as he focused on taking the shortest route possible. This place might be beautiful at times, but still deeply unsettling for the creatures of his particular core and culture.

A surge of warmth questioningly swirled between his lungs and he willed himself to breathe through the want to let it spread.

 _Almost there_ , and even his own mind's voice sounded as if it was gritting its teeth. _Hold on, buddy. Almost there._

The warmth in his chest settled down in a begrudged obligation, and the sense of hurt pride that came from it made the corners of his mouth twitch upwards.

_I know you want to help me defeat the terrible winter foe, and you will - when we are not in a place where it would be considered a grave offence. You can blaze in one of the Neutral Areas all you like._

If the source of warmth had a mouth it could scoff with, Roman Prince supposed that the feeling it was currently channeling to him would be it.

He laughed softly, the sound quiet enough not to disturb the muffled world around him as he continued his walk down the street, into the night.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

It wasn’t a tourist destination by any means, but it was his. Small, a bit hidden and maybe sometimes not very safe if he kept working long into the night, but his - and he loved it with all of his soft, ever-open heart.

By definition, Patton Foster wasn’t considered a fae. He wasn’t considered a fae in the same way you or I wouldn’t be considered a crocodile – just because certain parts of the human brain had developed from those of a reptile, humans do not usually see themselves as one. Dog is a dog, although it had developed from a wolf, and so on. Going by this logic, Patton Foster wasn’t a fae.

'Except,' he thought as he very carefully cut the stems of peach-yellow roses, clutching the gardening scissors by a rubber-coated handle and suppressing the familiar shudder every time the blades met with a sharp metallic _snip_ , 'there are logical expectations, and then there is the reality. And sometimes, those two aren't necessarily friends.'

He put the scissors down, consciously laying them flat on the counter so that the pointy end wouldn't scrape against the surface, and put the roses in one of the glass vases prepared for the new delivery.

Everything in the shop that could be made of glass, porcelain, ceramics, stone, rubber or plastic, was made of those materials. If he had to use a wire for straightening the stems on Transvaal daisies or for arranging bouquets, he would make sure to wear gloves. If he couldn't wear his gloves, he would grit his teeth and get the unpleasant contact over with as quickly as possible.

Even the door knobs were made of glass, with only one iron screw going through the middle of each glass ball, fastening it into place.

Patton shouldn't be affected. Really, he shouldn't. There was only one documented fae ancestor in his family, and she had lived about nine generations prior. Neither his father, his grandfather and not even his great-grandmother have possessed any of the telling features, appearing completely human - and then Patton was born, and his father hadn't asked for the DNA tests only thanks to the true, heartfelt adoration and respect he harbored for Patton's mother, and the love for their new baby that was already wreaking havoc in his heart.

By the scientific definition, Patton wasn't a fae, but he was _odd_.

He couldn't touch metal, as has been richly proven before. _Technically_ he could, but the feeling of it brought a sensation upon him as if a jar of bugs have been released over the back of his brain and was now crawling all over it. Even if he soldiered through it and held his ground, the prolonged exposure produced terrible headaches, explosive flashes of pain behind his eyes that made him cry when he was little and that he would rather avoid now that he was an adult.

So _technically_ , he could - just as he technically could cuddle a kitten by the dumpster even though he was terribly allergic to cats.

Unfortunately, the teachers at his late school understood _technically_ as a satisfactory enough ability and had a very little tolerance for his gloves, sudden migraines and the need for a desk that wasn't made from the treacherous material. In the end, his mother couldn't take it anymore and home-schooled him, reluctantly letting him back to a public schooling only a year before his high-school graduation.

Then there was the thing with friends.

Patton wasn't a fae, that's what any professional had said to his parents after many and many sittings with experts on magical powers and mutated beings. Patton wasn't a fae, he was a normal human boy, a normal human boy who may have inherited some physical features after his non-human ancestors, such as strikingly blue eyes, a shock of bright ginger hair, freckles, slightly pointier ears and a mischievous smile that showed a tad-too-pointy canines when he grinned - but a normal human boy, nonetheless. His absolute despise towards anything metallic might also be one such inherited feature, but not one so major as to label him a different race.

The one thing he kept from all those professionals, experts and even his parents, was that disliking metal wasn't even the number three thing that worried him, no-sir. The thing that caused him the most grief was the fact that whenever he met a human he took strong liking to and who wasn't his family, he got a sudden and inexplicable urge to _keep_ this human.

Not as in "being really good friends with them and texting every day". Not in the sense of dragging them somewhere and locking them up forever. Not for anything as mean, no. It ran much deeper than that. He wanted to take this human home with him, and to take care of them, and to make them so happy in his presence that they would stay forever. That they would want to stay. He wanted the play-dates to never end, to make other children like his house so much they would simply stay a day more, and then another, and another, until they would just never get to leave and be his.

His heart knew that was bad, though. He knew that making other children stay voluntarily would be downright impossible, not to mention unhealthy for them and that it would require a horrible amount of deceit an manipulation from his side - and he hated it. It scared him. He tried to control it, he really did, and yet at the end of most sleep-overs he would throw a tantrum when either he or the other child had to go home. He didn't want to go home without them. He didn't want them to go to their homes! He wanted them to stay, and not being able to make them _want to_ stay would always make him lose his sound mind, although he would later recall these moments with a deep-felt surge of hot shame and guilt. His always-so-patient parents thought he just had a possessive streak, and tried to reason with him through it each time - he would see them at school, they could have another play-date next week, they would not disappear just by not being in his sight. He would always nod in understanding, but deep down he knew it wasn't a mere childish possessiveness that made him cry like a spoiled lunatic when his friends got into a car. He knew it deep in his bones the same way the dandelion knows it is a dandelion, and contently does exactly what a dandelion should.

Except Patton wasn't a dandelion, and by all logic he also wasn't a fae, and he definitely shouldn't do what his resolutely-not-fae's instincts were telling him to do. Because Patton might have not been a dandelion or a fae or tolerant to iron, but he was a kind-hearted being who knew a difference between the right and wrong. And this felt very, very wrong.

By the time he was twelve, he avoided making any friends at all for the fear of doing something hurtful to them. And it was lonely, and he was sad, but he would be sadder if he caused someone grief, and so he plowed through it.

His metal intolerance became more bearable throughout the years. He wasn't sure whether it was because his body matured, or because he had been exposed to it enough and built a sort of mellow immunity to it, but he was grateful for it nonetheless. It meant he was able to sit through the college with some Advil, a lot of soul-searching and some good old determination to make his mother proud. She was already proud, he knew, but he wanted to show her that her decision to home-school him wouldn't affect his ability to earn a diploma. And he succeeded - he left college with a degree from botanical studies and garden design, a lease agreement for an abandoned store in the downtown and an absolute lack of friends who wouldn't forget him right after their celebrational hangover wore off the next morning.

Just as he dreaded, yet just as he hoped.

Patton Foster, who could make eleven kinds of herbal potion on spot to cure stomach-poisoning, who knew how to make a paper crane that moved its wings if you pulled its tail and who was, by all logic, not a fae, put the roses into a refrigerated floral display and gently gathered an armful of mexican columbines before returning to the counter with a sigh.

When he once more picked up the scissors, his hand was trembling so lightly the outside observer wouldn't probably even notice.


End file.
